random

Everyone has struggled. Money, love life, health, relationships with family, friends, job – it comes from everywhere. As a parent, you not only have your own struggles but those of your children as well. I have struggled with depression and anxiety for a long time. I remember my medications most days, and that helps, but how do you medicate against other people’s struggles? Or perhaps, you medicate because of other people’s struggles? I’m not sure. My children are struggling – each in their own way(s), and it hurts my heart so much. When I was pregnant with them, I made sure to eat right, never drank or smoked, gave up caffeine, and just in general – took care of myself for them. When they were born, I nursed them, co-slept, read up on brain development and tried to make sure they were happy, healthy babies. Their milestones were all on time, and I began to homeschool them as soon as they were ready to, never caring about what age they “should” be doing stuff because I knew my children and their capabilities.

I accept that I did fail them in some ways. Ways that I didn’t foresee. I stayed in a toxic relationship because I thought they were happy, that they were being nurtured and cared for by two parents. I was wrong on that – and I’ll never be able to make it up to them. I failed in homeschooling them past the point where I felt I could comfortably do so and they fell behind, which should not have been a problem – but their father made it the problem. They are caught up now because they were put into public school, which has then introduced them to more struggles beyond what they were ready for. Labels are put on them in school files, meetings are set, plans made. When one child has an issue, it becomes my issue because I do not know how to separate myself from their problems.

I tried to do everything I knew how to do to make sure my children had a GOOD START. A good, healthy, happy childhood… one they could look back upon with smiles. As it turns out, I failed. Miserably. If, at the end of my life, I’m asked what I did – that’s what my answer will be. I was a failure at the one thing I thought I was good at.

It’s gotta be a tribute to my love of my children that the impending “trial” that their father is forcing has turned my heart, literally, into a quivering mess. It’s rewarded me with a 2 a.m. trip to the e.r. because my heart was skipping beats more than once a minute, all night. Skipping beats at such a rate that I’ve had to add another medication to my list. The medication seems to be helping to push my emotions over the edge they’re usually dangling near.

See the skip? Every time it happens, it catches my breath. Makes it hard to sleep. The new meds haven’t stopped them – I’m hoping it will start to work soon.

I took this photo many years ago when we were still living in northern New Hampshire. I happened to notice the sunlight coming into our tiny bathroom window, and ran to get my camera. Balancing one foot on each side of the tub’s edge, I snapped this photo because the scene absolutely spoke to me.

Alone

Later, when I got it printed, it moved me even more. That tree was me.

That’s me – that tree, standing there alone – exposed to the elements, with nothing (or no one) for shelter.

“But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when
your parents die, you feel like instead of going
in to every fight with backup,
you are going into every fight alone.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day